The Two-Way

7:24 am

Tue August 21, 2012

An aircraft that had been set to fly Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey out of Afghanistan today was damaged by shrapnel from rockets fired at the Bagram air field north of Kabul from outside its fences.

Two maintenance workers on the ground were slightly wounded, NPR's Tom Bowman reports. Dempsey was not near the aircraft at the time. He later left Afghanistan on another plane.

As we reported Monday, the general was in Afghanistan in part to talk with coalition and Afghan commanders about the increasingly deadly problem of "green on blue" attacks. There have been at least 20 such shootings and suicide bombings by Afghans in military or police uniforms who targeted American or other international troops.

This morning, The Washington Post reports that "Afghan officials say they have launched an expanded effort to spy on their own police and army recruits, an acknowledgment that previous measures designed to reduce insurgent infiltration in the country's security services have failed."